Friday, May 20, 2011

Fun Fabric Friday: 05/20/2011

I started following Thomas Knauer's blog a couple months ago and I was excited to hear that he had designed a fabric line for Andover.  Thomas's fabric line is called Pear Tree and it was officially announced at Market.  He posted some images of the new line on his blog and I've pilfered the image of the blue colorway, which is called azure.  I especially love the one with the tree (the top left corner image).  Go check it out and buy some when it's released!

Image from Thomas Knauer's website.


Tuesday, May 17, 2011

PMQG Kona Cotton Charms Challenge

At the Philly Modern Quilt Guild we decided to host a challenge for May using Robert Kauffman Kona Cotton Solids charm packs.  The Kona Cotton Solids are a dream for quilters because there are SO MANY colors available!  Several other modern quilt guilds around the country have already conducted similar challenges and each one had a different spin. For our group, we decided to allow only prints to be added to the charm pack - so no additional solids. We chose the "brights" version of the charm pack and I quickly started agonizing over what to make!

So, as it turned out, I came up with an idea I was really excited about, but in order to do it properly, I needed two charm squares of each color ... As it turned out, I actually had two identical charm packs for the challenge, so I decided to cheat and use two rather than the one pack we were given. Technically, I guess that means I added solids ... But at least they were the same ones we already had to use! Haha.

The pattern I ended up using was a slightly modified version of Julie's Flying in Formation pattern, which I had seen months ago and really liked. Rather than use all solids as Julie had, I used striped fabrics for the "goose" part of each block. I was inspired by all the stripes Rita had been using over on Red Pepper Quilts (especially THIS one), so i went over to Whimsie Dots' Etsy shop and bought a fat quarter bundle of reclaimed striped bed sheets! The colors and varying stripes were so much fun, I just had to use them in this quilt.

So, without further ado, here is a photo of the finished product:

Stripes_Front

The colors aren't coming out that well in this photo - I think my iPhone was not happy with all the confusing stripes.  Below is a closeup of a section of the front so you can see some of my favorite stripes better.

Stripes_FrontCloseup

For the back I used this adorable Japanese fabric and I pieced in the rest of the charm squares I hadn't used.

Stripes_Back

And because the pattern I based this on was called "Flying in Formation", I'll show you a closeup of the "Engrish" text on the back, which relates back to flying:


Stripes_BackCloseup